Photo by Roberto Cortese on Unsplash
Just think of how mobile apps completely transformed consumer behavior and helped us satisfy a variety of needs in everyday life. From Uber to get a quick cab ride to get your daily needs delivered at the doorstep through Amazon to satisfy your food cravings through a quick order to any of the leading food delivery apps, in a multitude of ways, our life is now dependent on on-demand mobile apps and e-commerce apps.
Hardly we can deny the transformative power of mobile apps for the e-commerce industry, both in terms of the ease of doing business and user experience.
A Quick Recap of the Mobile App Benefits
As per most surveys and studies, most users find mobile apps more helpful and effective for browsing products and looking for services. Well, the mobile apps primarily dominate the browsing behavior and preferences of today’s customers because of native or device-optimized user experience and the ease of access. Let’s have a quick recap of the key advantages of mobile apps for product browsing and search.
- Mobile apps are highly intuitive and optimized for a mobile experience to easily and quickly help user’s complete functions.
- Mobile apps allow better integration with device features such as GPS, accelerometer, camera, etc.
- Mobile apps, thanks to local caching, allow offline access as well.
- Mobile apps, through notifications, keep continuous contact with the users and send alerts and essential messages regarding promotions and things that matter to users.
- Mobile apps allow more scope personalization as it gives users more control on several app features.
How Mobile Apps and e-Commerce Fit Ideally for Each Other?
In a multitude of ways, mobile apps and e-commerce stores share a close mutual connection and natural bond. First of all, the popularity of mobile apps and e-commerce stores just happened simultaneously and almost in the same time frame. Through their mobile apps, most of the leading e-commerce brands, including Amazon and Walmart, generated more business than their traditional desktop e-commerce websites.
Mobile apps helped in the emergence and ever-growing popularity of on-demand apps and services across the niches. From the on-demand cab services like Uber to on-demand grocery and food delivery apps to app-based on-demand services for providing skilled maid-servants or security guards, thanks to mobile apps a new on-demand economy has become part of our daily life in urban settings.
Naturally, the e-commerce stores for years delivering goods at the doorstep of their customers are now embracing this on-demand app-based model to stay competitive and relevant. The IndianAppDevelopers creating unique on-demand apps made way for exceptional value addition that every e-commerce store now considers invaluable.
Key Mobile App Features Responsible for Reshaping the e-Commerce Shopping Experience
While mobile apps’ impact in transforming the e-commerce shopping experience is all too clear, certain app features played a very important role in this. Let us have a look at some of the key mobile app features to reshape the e-commerce shopping experience.
 Offline Access
These days most mobile apps, including the leading mobile e-commerce apps, provide offline access through local in-device data caching. Customers can choose products and make changes in their carts, and the changes will be updated as soon as the network connection is restored. This obviously helps improving customer engagement.
GPS
GPS is a key location technology available with almost every mobile device and is widely used by e-commerce apps to detect whether a particular product is available for the delivery in the respective customer location. Apart from this, by tracking GPS location e-commerce apps can automatically detect customer location and fill the address form. This, of course, enhances the customer experience.
 Voice Search
Voice search powered with the latest technology, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) can also help customers to search for products using voice commands. The advanced voice search functions powered by NLP can detect spoken words irrespective of the differences in pronunciation. This is another way customers get a better product search experience on mobile.
Enhanced Scope of Personalization
Mobile e-commerce apps are capable of providing a tremendously personalized shopping experience, unlike their desktop counterparts. Let us have a quick look at the key ways mobile e-commerce apps help personalization.
- Push notifications used by e-commerce apps can send highly personalized messages for customers to avail lucrative deals, offers, and discounts and thus can boost sales.
- Personalized recommendations of products as per the earlier search and purchase history help customer to find products and buying options of their preference and budget.
- Finally, intelligent chatbots that can communicate with customers based on customer behavior and previous shopping preferences can deliver more engaging service to the customers.
 Minimize Cart Abandonment
All over the globe, most e-commerce stores suffer from an increasing rate of fart abandonment. Many customers leaving an app without completing the purchase of items saved in the cart create a big challenge to the business conversion. Because of personalized communication and ease of accessing the store right on the screen, the customers visiting an e-commerce store through mobile apps are more likely to reappear in the store and complete the shopping. Mobile apps are saving the credentials of the customers by making the checkout process more comfortable and reduce cart abandonment to a great extent.
Conclusion
Like every other business niche, mobile apps will also dominate the e-commerce business. In the years to come, on-demand mobile apps can very well be the only e-commerce gateway.
